Luis Muñoz, a father of three from El Salvador who has lived legally in the United States for nearly two decades, was turned away from a Motor Vehicle Commission office in Eatontown earlier this year when he tried to renew his driver's license.

He ended up driving illegally for six weeks, risking up to $500 in fines, before he was able to obtain a new license on his third visit to a state MVC office.

Muñoz, 61, of Red Bank, has legal authorization to live and work in the United States under a humanitarian program called Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, which offers renewable work permits and protection from deportation to 430,000 immigrants from countries devastated by natural disaster and armed conflict.

In recent months, however, the Trump administration has moved to end those protections for El Salvador and five other countries among the 10 in the program. It has given the affected immigrants a year to 18 months, depending on country of origin, to adjust their status or leave the U.S., allowing them to renew their work permits in the interimfor a fee of $495.

Luis Muñoz has been turned away twice when trying to renew his driver's license since the Trump administration announced that it will be ending Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans.(Photo: Steph Solis/app.com)

But Muñoz and other TPS holders and their advocates say the renewed permits have arrived in the mail days or weeks late in recent years — delays that they say have only grown longer since Donald Trump became president. Then there is the confusion over the program's status in the wake of the administration's announcements that the protections for most TPS holders will be ending.

Taken together, they have left some TPS holders in New Jersey, who, like Muñoz, have lived in the United States and played by the rules of its immigration system for decades, unable to drive or work legally.

"It's very depressing," Muñoz said. "I'm a mechanic. I operate vehicles. I need my work permit to be able to work, and if I stop working, I have to tell my company in advance so they can find someone else. And that's not something I can do anyway, because I need the work."

A federal judge in San Francisco on Oct. 3 temporarily blocked the administration from ending TPS protections, writing that the affected immigrants "indisputably will suffer irreparable harm and great hardship." The government is expected to appeal.

It's not clear how many TPS holders in New Jersey are experiencing delays, but six told NorthJersey.com and the USA TODAY Network New Jersey that they had run into problems with state agencies or their employers as a result. Advocates who are working with those immigrants say they know of several others whose work permits arrived late.

The problem is not limited to TPS holders or to immigrants in New Jersey, where 19,700 TPS recipients were living when they applied for the program, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Tammy Lin, an immigration attorney in San Diego, said some of her clients — including asylum applicants and visa holders with temporary work permits — have encountered similar delays while attempting to renew their work permits.

"On average, I would tell people it would be three months before they could get the physical card," she said. "Now it seems very haphazard, and it seems to be taking twice as long, if not seven or eight months."

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Jonnelle Rodriguez, a caseworker with the American Friends Service Committee, an advocacy group that provides clients with attorneys, said she has fielded several complaints from TPS holders who said they couldn't renew their licenses. She said some reported delays in receiving new work permits.

"For clients whose employment is based on driving, it can be very problematic for them," Rodriguez said, "just like for everyday individuals who have families and children and have to get to schools or work, it can be very problematic."

These TPS recipients said the issues with their work permits are the latest hurdle they have faced under an administration that they say is trying to strip them of their protections and remove them from the United States.

Michael Bars, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the federal agency continues to process applications for TPS status even though TPS holders' legal status will soon end. He said USCIS does not consider Muñoz's difficulties to be a sign of a delay.

“When the secretary announced the termination of TPS designation for certain countries, she also delayed the effective date of termination and provided time for an orderly transition," Bars wrote in a statement, referring to Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen. "The employment authorization documents of these individuals were automatically extended to address issues arising during the transition."

On Jan. 17, 2017, three days before Trump was inaugurated, the agency announced that certain immigrants, including TPS holders, whose work permits were expiring soon would automatically have their work privileges extended by six months so long as they had applied for a new permit while the old one was still valid. The goal was "to prevent gaps in employment authorization and documentation," the agency stated online.

"This ensured that they continue to have evidence of employment authorization to show employers when they are hired or need to provide evidence of continued work authorization while their renewal applications are pending," Bars wrote.

However, the agency also has stated in notices published in the Federal Register that TPS holders from some countries may not receive their new permits before their current ones expire "given the time frames involved with processing TPS re-registration applications."

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Luis Muñoz has lived in the U.S. legally for nearly two decades with Temporary Protected Status. Recently, he had trouble renewing his driver's license.
Steph Solis, @stephmsolis

Months without permits

Muñoz left El Salvador with his wife and three children in 1995 because, he said, he was being threatened by local gangs. He said members of a local gangthreatened him after he refused to join, and that they extorted his relatives for years afterward.

The familymoved to Belize, which welcomed them but had few job opportunities. They flew to the United States in July 1995 and overstayed their tourist visas, settling in Red Bank.

Muñoz and his family obtained TPS status after a devastating earthquake and two aftershocks struck El Salvador in 2001. In the years since, Muñoz has worked as a diesel mechanic, rising at 6 a.m. to drive to a garage in Asbury Park, working until 5 or 6 p.m.

He went to the MVC office in Eatontown in March to renew his driver's license. Based on past experience, he arrived armed with a letter from his lawyer and documents from USCIS explaining that his application for a renewed work permit had been received and was being processed.

Muñoz said the clerk tossed his paperwork aside without reading it.

Luiz Munoz's lawyer wrote a letter explaining that his work permit had been extended for six months. He was turned down twice when he tried to renew his New Jersey driver's license even though he showed the letter to a clerk each time.(Photo: Courtesy of Luis Munoz)

"It was embarrassing," he said, adding that the clerk "totally ignored me and then said to come back another time, that she would call me."

Muñoz said he didn't get a callback. He visited another MVC office in Freehold Township with similar results. On a third attempt, back in Eatontown, he was finally approved for a new license, six weeks after the old one expired.

His work permit arrived in the mail in May, two weeks later.

In some ways, Muñoz said, he is lucky. His children are grown, so when his license expired he didn't have to worry about getting them to and from school. His boss let him work until his new permit arrived in the mail after reviewing the letter from Muñoz's lawyers at the American Friends Service Committee explaining the delay.

Others, however, have faced more difficulty.

Ricardo Aviles, 53, of Jersey City came to the United States illegally from Honduras 33 years ago, following two brothers who had found steady, lucrative work in New Jersey. When Hurricane Mitch struck Honduras in 1998, killing more than 7,000, Aviles qualified for TPS.

He lived with TPS without incident for nearly two decades until January, when his luck expired with his work permit. Until then, he had worked as an elevator operator at Newport Centre for 17 years, paying his bills and sending money home to cover his younger brother's Catholic school tuition and to support his mother until she died of a heart attack in 2016.

He tried to explain to his bosses that his work authorization had been extended for six months but his new permit hadn't arrived in the mail.

They fired him.

"They wanted to see the work permit," he said. "I told them it's impossible to bring the work permit because the process takes two months, sometimes 90 days.

"Without my work permit," he added, "I also couldn't get unemployment."

Union representatives confirmed that they convinced managers to reinstate Aviles, but it took him five weeks to get a paycheck after his reinstatement. Neither Aviles nor union representatives would name the employer at Newport Centre.

Aviles' work permit, which was renewed for only six months, arrived in the mail five months late, in mid-June. It expired on July 5. He is waiting for his new replacement card.

Ricardo Aviles, an immigrant from Honduras, has worked as an elevator operator in Jersey City for 17 years thanks to a work permit under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Photographed in Jersey City, NJ on Monday, June 11, 2018.(Photo: Danielle Parhizkaran/NorthJersey)

With TPS for Honduras due to expire in January 2020, Aviles, like other TPS holders, faces the choice of going home or becoming undocumented. Without legal status, he wouldn't be able to find steady work. He would lose his health insurance, which he uses to offset medical expenses related to his diabetes, which forced the amputation of his right leg.

Going home, he said, also would mean giving up access to secure retirement benefits.

"In my country, I don't have rights to Social Security because I didn't work there," Aviles said. I've worked here, and yet I probably won't get Social Security benefits despite working here all my life."

José Diaz, 52, of Elizabeth came toin the United States seeking work in the mid-1990s. Like other Salvadorans, he qualified for TPS after the earthquake in 2001.

This year was the first time his work permit arrived months late; he applied in late February and received it over the summer. He said his boss at the oil packaging warehouse where he works in Hillside acknowledged that he is authorized to work, but still, Diaz worried that the delays would cost him his job.

"One stresses about work, whether the rules can change from one moment to the next," he said. "Since we have changed owners in the past, sometimes new owners can mean new rules."

He let his driver's license expire and didn't renew it after hearing that other TPS recipients were having issues at MVC offices. Instead, he has been taking the bus or a taxi to work.

The 'invisible' extension

Even though the federal government has announced that it is automatically extending work permits for TPS holders and other qualifying immigrants, immigration lawyers and advocates say there is no guarantee that private companies, state agencies or other federal offices will be aware of the process or honor the employment authorization extensions.

As a result, advocates said, TPS holders are at risk of being fired, as Aviles was, or being denied licenses or other benefits to which they are entitled.

Lin, the San Diego-based immigration attorney, said her clients who have not received their work permits on time have had conflicts with their employers, even though the permits have been automatically extended by at least six months.

In New Jersey, an MVC spokesman said the agencyis notified of work permit extensions by USCIS. "That information is then immediately shared with our field offices so they are aware of the extension that has been granted," the spokesman, Jim Hooker, wrote in an email.

But at least five TPS holders, including Muñoz, said they were denied licenses despite the automatic extensions.

Elizabeth Trinidad, an immigration lawyer based in Cumberland County, calls the USCIS automatic renewals the "invisible 180-day extension" because, beyond the notice on the agency's website, there is no guarantee that state workers or private employers will know about it.

Trinidad said MVC clerks may even be confusing the extension with an unrelated three-month driver's license extension the state agency used to offer non-citizens.

"What I think has happened is that the local clerks have been given the instructions 'no more extensions, no more extensions,' " said Trinidad, who has worked with the MVC in the past. "However, it appears to me that they have been insufficiently trained on this other extension that exists in real life."

A ripple effect

Erika Nava, a policy analyst at New Jersey Policy Perspective, a progressive think tank, said a delay in receiving a work permit not only could cost an immigrant a job, it also could have an effect on the person's spouse and children.

"This all has a ripple effect for the whole family," she said. "Maybe they can't afford to pay rent for a month. They might ask for benefits they weren't asking for" previously.

Morena Miron initially came to the United Statesillegally to escape poverty in her native El Salvador. She went to work in Red Bank and, a couple of years later, qualified for TPS after the 2001 earthquakes.

Three years after that, she learned to drive and got her license.

"It was great. It became easier to take my daughter to the doctor, go to the supermarket," she said. "My car is like my best friend in that regard."

That friend doesn't come cheap. Miron said she spends much of her income on her car payment, insurance, repairs and gas to drive her daughter to and from school and herself to work.

This year, Miron's work permit arrived in April, a month late. She tried to renew her license while she waited but was denied until after her work permit arrived. During that time, she couldn't drive her 13-year-old daughter to school.

"I rely on my license and my car," she said. "How would I drop off and pick up my daughter? How would I get to work? There are a lot of areas that don't have bus stops."

So for three weeks this spring, Miron sent her daughter to school in a taxi every day. Miron said she couldn't get to the church where she works as a cleaner unless she got a ride from her co-workers. Those expenses took a chunk out of their already limited budget of $2,100 a month.

"The little money I have goes to rent, car payments, driving my daughter to school because she can't get a bus to take her to school," Miron added, "and it'll be even farther to high school. I can't pay for taxis to take her to school."

Verifying status

The MVC uses a U.S. Department of Homeland Security database called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, to determine whether immigrants are eligible for a state driver's license. The MVC pays DHS between 50 cents and $1.50 for each search, which is designed to confirm an applicant's legal status in the United States.

A Motor Vehicle Commission spokesman said the agency uses the SAVE database to verify how long applicants with temporary protections are allowed to stay in the country.

It is unclear why Muñoz was flagged in the SAVE database while his renewed work permit was being processed. Neither the MVC nor DHS would comment on a specific case.

Whatever the reason, Muñoz said, he wishes the clerks had reviewed his lawyers' letter rather than relying on the computer system. He didn't have his work permit, but he did have the paperwork from the federal government acknowledging the extension of his work authorization.

"I think they shouldn't be the ones making this determination as though they themselves were immigration officials," he said.

"They're doing this right now to a lot of people," Muñoz added. "Now immigration has our information, now the applications have been approved, yet MVC doesn't accept the licenses."

After hearing about several TPS holders who had run into difficulty when seeking to renew their licenses, Hooker offered to put a supervisor in touch with TPS holders who have faced difficulties renewing their licenses.

"We have to find a way to protect ourselves," Muñoz said. "We're here working, paying taxes. I never had a problem with the law. I'm clean."

Note: Immigrants with Temporary Protected Status do not hold temporary visas as part of the arrangement that authorizes them to live and work in the United States. An earlier version of this story stated incorrectly that TPS holders must renew visas in order to stay in the country.